


So Beautifully Matched

by PhoenixFalls



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Developing Relationship, Multi, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5818459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixFalls/pseuds/PhoenixFalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maya struggles to find her place with Pepper and Tony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Beautifully Matched

**Author's Note:**

  * For [APgeeksout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/gifts).



Maya felt, sometimes, that she and Tony were too much alike.

She had a healthy ego; she knew she rivaled Tony as a scientist. His knowledge was broader, spanning an impressive number of fields, but hers went deeper.

They both got lost in their labs for days on end. Their conversation around the dinner table (or at the kitchen counter, or in the bathroom while brushing their teeth) tended towards what Pepper could only think of as technobabble.

They both had duties that had to take precedence over anything Pepper needed – Tony as Iron Man, Maya in helping undo the damage she caused while working for AIM.

And both of them woke screaming from nightmares. Maya had never asked Tony for the details of his; hers were always filled with people burning from the inside out. Sometimes those people wore her face. Sometimes they wore Pepper’s.

Pepper deserved better than both of them, really. But given that Pepper had Tony, Maya was baffled by what it was that she brought to Pepper’s life beyond yet another person to ride herd on. She watched them as they dressed to go out to their high society functions and they looked so beautifully matched – their glittering camera-ready smiles, Tony’s darkness to Pepper’s light – that Maya simply could not see a place for herself with them.

Which was why, when Maya caught Pepper sneaking out of the bedroom shaking and sweating from her own nightmares, her first guilty feeling was _relief_. Even though Pepper’s nightmares were ultimately Maya’s fault; even though she was useless at comfort and made Pepper feel better mostly through her own flailing ineptitude; it was still a sign that Pepper was just a tiny bit broken too.

It meant they could be three broken people together. Maya could picture that.


End file.
